Winter is surely here now



Snow is piling up here in the northern hemisphere. We're getting winter cold and the precipitation to match. We're also getting closer to Christmas, a holiday that comes with faith-based understanding. 

Throughout Advent, we wait, even as people in the time before Jesus was born, only they waited for decades, maybe even centuries for the promised one that God would send as Saviour. We wait while stores play Christmas tunes and carols, host Santa Claus and seduce us to buy, buy buy so that our loved ones will be excited on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve, whenever the holiday celebrations are held in our family.

We give gifts too, and try to do it without the excess that strains our January and February budgets. Trying to stay within our means and remember that Christmas is about celebrating the Saviour of the world. More on that in a few days.
Today, a poem about winter, published by Tower Poetry in its Winter Edition 2004-2005, Vol. 53 No. 2




Frozen Beauty

  
maples wave skeleton arms, patterning a cold blue sky
exposing abandoned nests and fragile papery globes
work of birds and bees

silvery icicles and white patches weigh down
evergreen branches, they sag
like an old woman with a heavy load

paw prints parallel booted feet
imprinting, crunching the cold white blanket
over frozen soil and city concrete

gardens, a silhouette of frozen stalks, dried seedpods
waiting… at rest until spring
like hibernating bears




poem and photo copyright Carolyn R. Wilker


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